An elevator system typically comprises one or more elevator cars installed in a building to travel vertically in a hoistway. In larger buildings, it is typical that there are several elevator cars serving the floors of the building. There are numerous different configurations in which elevator cars can be arranged relative to each other. Usually, there are several elevator cars traveling in parallel hoistways, but also configurations are known where elevator cars travel in a common hoistway. The higher the building is, the longer is the distance that people need to pass when exiting the building. Especially in tower buildings, people coming from the uppermost floors need to pass a long way to exit the building.
In the event that one or more floors of the building is on fire, people need to be evacuated from that floor and usually also from the floors close to it. In some cases, a major portion of the building, or even the whole building, needs to be evacuated. In prior art, elevator cars have been used to transport people directly from the evacuation floor(s) to the safe exit floor(s). A drawback of the known solutions is that if the floor to be evacuated is far from a safe floor, such as the exit floor of the building (typically the ground floor), round-trip time of the elevators from the evacuation floor to the safe floor and back may be too long for evacuating all people safely and in time. The higher the building, the longer the round trip times typically are. Long round trips times easily results in mediocre capacity. Also, the last ones of the people (also referred to as passengers) located at the most risky floors may need to wait relatively long for an elevator to pick them up and transport away.